Arda 4e - Scales of War

origin of Arda

Arda is simply one of many worlds in the multiverse. A multiverse is a system of interconnected planes and worlds, through portals, alternate dimensions, and spiritual and magical ties that often transcend mortal understanding.

While many races and sects believe an origin story that places significant importance on their race or deity, the most common origin story for the multiverse is that recorded by the elves. This story is considered truth by the majority of Nerathi-descended human philosophers, and many Nerathi religious groups. Most citizens of the various nations of the world neither know this story, nor care about it, since it does not affect their daily lives.

The Beginning

In the beginning was an unexplainable force, believed by some to be a point of infinite potential, but no existence. This point, called simply “Unity” by some, was disturbed or corrupted (again, by something unexplainable or unknowable), and the Unity tore asunder. The shreds of existence gradually coalesced into the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos. These planes contained so much pent energy from creation that they both spawned beings of astounding power: the gods and the primordials, respectively.

The primordials seem to have been driven by a need to create: first servants, such as djinns and titans, then the Material Plane worlds such as Arda. While the titans worked, they discarded pieces of creation that were too dark or too bright for the Material Plane; these cast-offs coalesced into the alternate planes of the Shadowfell and the Feywild, respectively.

The gods saw the primordials’ work, and desired to make it better. They created natural life in the Material and Feywild, and tamed the chaotic elements of the worlds.

The Dawn War

Finally, the primordials tired of their sport, and began to destroy the world to create something new. The gods stepped in to stop them, and thus began the Dawn War. The primordials retaliated by shattering the Lattice of Heaven, and one of the gods responded by planting a shard of pure evil in the Elemental Chaos, around which grew the Abyss; this heinous act triggered that god’s exile, and a further escalation of the War by both sides.

As the primordials in their anger tried to destroy the world to spite the gods and their mortal servants, the gods each selected an aspect of creation to champion and defend, then raised armies of angels from the Astral Plane to fight against the more numerous primordials.

Small groups of allied gods isolated and destroyed the mighty but proud and arrogant primordials, and eventually, this tactic won victory for the gods. Exhausted by the war and the need to imprison the defeated and surrendered primordials, the gods retreated into their divine realms, and the world and its inhabitants began to take their own shapes, and went on to forge their own destinies.